Background
It has been a hotly debated issue for some time now as to whether nuclear energy should be included in green taxonomies and sustainable finance transactions.
Overall, we believe there is generally market consensus that nuclear energy is low carbon.
However, this is no agreement on whether it is the right type of energy and how much it should feature in net zero plans. There are also issues in relation to “do no significant harm” aspects of nuclear waste and the potential for large disasters to occur.
What is Nuclear Energy?
Both fission and fusion are nuclear reactions that produce energy; however, the processes are very different:
- Nuclear Fission is the splitting of a heavy, unstable nucleus into two lighter nuclei: and;
- Nuclear Fusion is the process where two light nuclei combine together releasing vast amounts of energy.
Current Status
Nuclear energy now provides about 10% of the world’s electricity from about 445 power reactors. Nuclear is the world’s second largest source of low-carbon power (IEA).
Over 50 countries utilize nuclear energy in about 220 research reactors (IRENA) and nuclear is already a substantial contributor to low carbon energy.
Pros & Cons
On the Positive Side nuclear energy is low cost (although very expensive to build plants), reliable, not intermittent like renewables, zero carbon, plus has a very high energy density therefore uses a smaller amount of space.
On the Negative Side, traditional nuclear technology uses a lot of water, has some environmental impact through waste, and there is the risk of nuclear accidents plus the fact that its non-renewable.
Setting up plants also take many years and are extremely expensive.
There are also arguments that developing nuclear takes capital away from solutions that are renewable and low carbon that just need to be scaled.
What’s the Future?
The call for nuclear energy to be part of the solution to reach net zero will grow.
Whilst we believe it is worth considering, we need to forge a way forward that uses small reactors and also looks at much more innovative methods such as fusion.
After all fusion is what powers the sun and stars.
We need all the solutions and tools we can to reach net zero, however, for nuclear old traditional approaches are not optimal and the nuclear future has to be about innovation.
